1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for and a method of manufacturing a film by winding a fixed-length film around a spool to produce a wound-film assembly, inserting the wound-film assembly into a cartridge case, and mounting a cap on an open end of the cartridge case thereby to produce a wound-film-loaded cartridge.
2. Description of the Related Art
For manufacturing a photographic photosensitive film housed in a cartridge, it is usually necessary to carry out successive processes of cutting a film strip into a fixed-length film, winding the fixed-length film around a spool to produce a wound-film assembly, inserting the wound-film assembly into a cartridge case, and mounting a cap on an open end of the cartridge case. Heretofore, since these processes are carried out by respective manufacturing apparatus, a sufficiently light-shielded environment needs to be provided when semi-finished products are transferred between any two of the manufacturing apparatus, and a substantial cost is required to construct a facility for creating such a light-shielded environment.
A film production system made up of those manufacturing apparatus is necessarily large in size, and suffers various problems due to the large size. For example, the large-size film production system results in an increase in the cost of air-conditioning equipment required for the system, and takes up a correspondingly large floor space and involves an increase in the running cost. The time required for the large-size film production system to produce photographic photosensitive films is extended by the large equipment size, tending to lower the production efficiency.
In order to alleviate the above drawbacks, there has been developed an apparatus having a cartridge component supply means, a spool supply means, a cap supply means, a film feed means, a measuring means for measuring a length by which a film is fed, a cutting means for cutting a film, a spool/cap replacing means, a cartridge component replacing means, and a crimping means for crimping a cap fitted over a cartridge component (for details, see Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 9-90571).
The constituent elements of the developed apparatus are so aggregated that the apparatus is of a relatively compact structure for manufacturing films encased in cartridges. However, it has been pointed out that the apparatus suffers little freedom in adding a device for automatically supplying cartridge components and dividing itself into a plurality of units, and hence it is difficult to design the apparatus in a flexible layout to meet needs at the apparatus installation site. In addition, the apparatus is designed for use at a fixed position within a given facility, and is not based on any idea whatsoever of portability that allows the apparatus to be installed at any desired location.